


A dream?

by ameema



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 12:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16429811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameema/pseuds/ameema
Summary: Héctor and Imelda still have things to work out, but how would the first hours be, after successfully avoiding the Final Death?





	A dream?

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've read some takes on what takes place directly after Miguel managed to spark Cocos memory and Héctor escaped the Final Death. This is one of those fics, one of the several ways I imagened how this could be. Please note I'm not a native English speaker, or Spanish for that matter, and I have no beta-reader. So if you find any mistakes, that's all me, and I apologize for that. This is the first piece I've written in quite a while, so I'm a bit rusty as well. Please read and comment if you wish.

"Imelda?"

  
The groggy voice came from her bed, where she had instructed her brothers to place her husband earlier, when they got back home from the stage after Miguel had managed to spark Cocos memories. She turned from her position by the window to look at him.

  
He was lying down as before, but his eyes were open and focused on her.

  
"What are you doing here? You should be with your family" Your family, not theirs.

  
"Be silent, mi amor, and go back to sleep. You are not well." He blinked at her for a moment.

  
"Sleep?" His head turned then, eyes following in a sweep of the room, taking in the sparsely furnished space before relaxing back onto the pillow. His lips formed a little smile, at the same time relieved and filled with pain. "Oh, I'm dreaming. Of course it's a dream, the real Imelda doesn't want anything to do with me."

  
She blinked, and rose from her vigil to walk closer to Héctor. She had not expected this, but it was not surprising. Successfully avoiding the Final Death was unheard of, and noone knew how he would react when concious again.

  
His eyes found her face again, and she could feel them lingering on her markings, as if he'd never seen them before.

  
"You are still the most beautiful woman I've ever laid eyes on, Imelda. It's like you haven't aged a day from when I last saw you."

  
"When you last saw me?" Curiosity made her to ask, before her mind could stop her. His smile grew smaller, more sad then she'd ever seen before.

  
"The day I left," Her non-existing heart jumped at the memory those words sparked in her "You were furious with me for leaving, and kept yelling at me and I thought it was a miracle, that this remarkable woman had agreed to become my wife, and had given me a daughter. That you would care so much that you would yell at me for walking away."

  
He paused for a moment, and she took the time to search his face. His bangs still fell over his forehead, jetblack just as in life, and why that detail hadn't made her question everything she believed about his life after their separation before she didn't know. His multicolored markings along his forehead were so much like him, his personally reflected in the colorful swirls and slopes.

  
His eyes had changed, Imelda wasn't sure if this new change was for the better or not. The eyes, so beautifully dark and comforting in life, had gained a red tint to them. How or why she didn't know, and wasn't sure she wanted to. His cheekbones were just as protuted as when they were alive, and she remembered how she would brush her knuckles along them for hours, liking the feel of him beneath her hand.

  
Without thinking, her hand reached out and her fingers reached his cheeks in a caress. His breathing hitched and his eyes closed. She wondered how long it had been since he'd been touched with kindness and her own eyes closed, to keep from building up moisture. Blinking them open after only a few seconds, she resumed her tracking of his features. She wondered about the gold tooth, and could only smile at the ever-present goatee her husband still sported. Her eyes fastened on her hand on his cheek and marveled at the difference in colour.

  
While her skeleton was a pristine white still, his was yellowed with numerous tiny cracks running over the surface. Imelda felt another wave of sadness grab at her.

  
"I would have stayed, Imelda." Her eyes lifted to his, and they were once more focused on hers. "I would have stayed, but I made a promise to Ernesto, to give this dream of ours a chance. You don't know how many nights I lay awake in one hotelroom or another, thinking back to that day and felt the regret burn through my body. I don't blame you for hating me, Imelda. I wasn't a very good husband or father. I'm sorry, for making you face life alone."

  
Her empty chest cavity clenched, as if her heart still dwelled there. Imelda had not expected those words to have such an impact after all this time, and she had to remeber that he thought he was dreaming, to him this conversation was a figment of his dream world and would not be remembered the next he woke up. If the last memory he had of them was on the day of their parting, she could only assume he didnt' rememer that she now resided in the land of the dead and couldn't tell her in person.

  
She scoffed at her own thinking. Of course after the first and only time they met here, he wouldn't have dared to approach her anyway. Filled with anger and resentment against the man who had promised to come back but never did had made her vicious, her words hard and unforgiving. She had seen his whole body sag and the hopeful smile dwindle as her speech continued and not giving a second thought to how he came to be in the land of the dead. She had watched him slowly shuffle away from her, his gait not yet a fullout limp, with his head down and battered hat clenched between his hands. He never tried to speak with her again.  
“Héctor, please try to go back to sleep. You're still healing after last night.” His eyes caught hers once again, not showing even a glimmer rememberance for what had taken place just hours before. She sighed quietly. “Well, let me tell you about life after you disappeared then, mi amor.”

  
She told her husband about learning to make shoes, the joy of finding a craft to support her daughter. How Coco grey more pretty each year and more like them both then she would think possible. How the business flowered and their family grew. She left out the parts about the shaky start of her own business and all the difficulties it meant to be an indipendent woman back then. That was a discussion for later, when a bit more time had passed from recent events and they both were more balanced.

  
She had not gotten far before she noticed his eyelids drooping lower with every blink. Her fingers started carding through his still-black hair as she softened her tone. Soon his breathing had evened out and his head had fully relaxed back on the pillow. She sighed again.

  
“It's not going to be easy, Héctor, to get us out of these infected thoughts. It's been too long for us both to be able to shake it off and go back to how we were in life. But I'm ready to try. I've never completely stopped loving you, even if I fooled myself and every other person in our family. I'm going to be here when you wake up again, and we'll try to go forward from this.”  
She rose, paused and ran her fingers down his cheekbones once more, and she could see his mouth twitch up in a tiny smile at the touch. A small smile graced her own lips as she turned and left the room. They had time when Héctor was better. They had all the time in the world now. The door to the bedroom closed with a soft click.


End file.
